‘Quake Champions’: The First Gameplay Ogle

It’s a pretty damn good time to be a nostalgia-tinged arena shooter from the days of yore. Doom made a glorious, goretacular, heavy-metal-soundtrack-amundo return earlier this year, reminding the world that it can still tangle with the best of them. It’s not quite the Doom we remember (a couple concessions to the brave new world of 2016 had to be made), but it respected its roots for the most part.

It did quite well in terms of the almighty dollar, too. As far as these big business bastards are concerned, that’s the most important thing right there. There’s a market for this sort of thing, is really what I’m getting at.

Alongside Doom, most of us would probably name Quake as the next big name in early FPS history. These arena shooters made the genre the phenomenon it is today, and you’ve got to respect that. You’ve got to appreciate their second coming, in the form of the reboot and Quake Champions.

Unveiled at this year’s E3 back in June, Champions messes with the formula a little. In line with the likes of MOBAs and Overwatch, each character has different abilities and such, which hasn’t sat too well with the faithful. Still, it’s not coming until next year, so there’s plenty of time to send death threats and dumbass internet rants to the developers.

There’s also plenty of time for id Software to hype us up. With this spangly new trailer, for instance. Here’s the first gameplay: